"Pardieu!" he laughed, "yes--if we're caught!"

"I'd as lief go to the galleys for fur-trading as the scaffold for
witchcraft," said I.

With that our bargain was sealed.




PART II




Now comes that part of a life which deals with what you will say no one
man could do, yet the things were done; with wonders stranger than
witchcraft, yet were true. But because you have never lived a
sword-length from city pavement, nor seen one man holding his own
against a thousand enemies, I pray you deny not these things.

Each life is a shut-in valley, says the jonglière; but Manitou, who
strides from peak to peak, knows there is more than one valley, which
had been a maxim among the jonglières long before one Danish gentleman
assured another there were more things in heaven and earth than
philosophy dreamed.